Emily's Ghost

by Stockenberg, Antoinette

  "Come out!" she cried impulsively. "Come out and get it over with!"

  She was standing now, and her head was splitting as if she'd been on the beach in the sun all day. She actually stamped her foot. The pain in her head doubled. "Fergus O'Malley!" she screamed, even though she felt extremely silly doing it. She glared at the open door.

  When he sauntered through it her first thought was, I am making this hallucination happen. This is the first step in the descent into madness.

  He spoke. "What's the hue and cry?" he asked, surprised. "I was letting ye sleep as ye implored me, and now ye sound like I've gone and stole yer horse."

  He looked real -- even younger in the daylight, more hopeful somehow.

  "Are you here or are you not?" she demanded. "If I'm crazy, then tell me and I'll go back to New Hampshire and my people will take care of me." She gave him a lofty look, fully expecting an answer to that.

  He shrugged. "Ye seem all right to me. A little prickly, maybe."

  What am I doing? I'm asking my hallucination if I'm hallucinating! "Look, O'Malley, if you're real--really a ghost -- then prove it. Make something levitate. Tell me something about myself no one else knows."

  "Can't do either one, as it happens." He rubbed his chin as if he were due for a shave, then said, "Ah. I've got it." He glanced around the room, then settled on the stripped-pine dresser that was her grandmother's. He stared at it intently, and the room began to fill with the blinding, hurting light of the night before.

  "Not that, not that!" she cried, shielding her eyes.

  "Ye want the bloody proof or not?" he answered, annoyed; but the light subsided.

  When Emily opened her eyes again she saw, burned into the top drawer of the honey-colored pine, the name "Fergus O'Malley" in a childish, scrawling signature.

  "I never went but to fifth grade," O'Malley explained self-consciously.

  Stunned, Emily approached her grandmother's bureau and put a finger to the deeply scorched drawer. It was hot to the touch. Her nostrils filled with the smell of charred wood. From behind her she heard O'Malley's voice, irritated and impatient once more, say, "Now. Can we get to work?"

  Chapter 6

  "Well, well: designer furniture," Emily quipped; but all the while she was thinking, That drawer front could just as well have been my thigh. The thought sent her spinning.

  "That bureau was my grandmother's." Her voice came out high and shrill and full of crazy indignation. "Erase it, please."

  O'Malley's surprised chuckle gave her courage.

  "I mean it! We have to have some rules."

  The ghost continued to be amused. "Such as?"

  "Such as, you may not harm me, or anything of mine -- or any one of mine."

  "Or else?"

  "This investigation will not go forward."

  She watched the muscles in his clenched jaw grind her impulsive threat into dust. At last he spoke. "So ye think ye cannot be replaced?"

  She seized the chance to protect herself from his wrath once and for all. "That's right. Even assuming it was possible for you to get someone else to take over the job, who would do it? Not a lawyer--no one's going to do pro bono work for a ghost, not when he can be pulling down two hundred dollars an hour."

  "An hour? When I didn't earn that much in a year?"

  "Yeah, well, different dollars. A doctor won't do it, either. They save bodies, not souls. Librarian? Too meek. A man of the cloth? Maybe, but most of 'em would balk at wearing the necklace. No, I'm the one you need."

  "You didn't think so last night," the ghost said sullenly.

  "I was tired last night. What about it, O'Malley? Deal? No harm to me or mine? Whether I succeed or not, as long as I do my best?"

  "I can't undo the dresser drawer," he said scrupulously. "You should have told me it had value for you. In my day, pine was a poor man's wood."

  Suddenly relieved, Emily said, "Never mind. I'll sand it out. Look, I need to bathe. I'm going to go in there, to the ... bathroom," she said, pointing. "And you'll stay ... here, won't you?" she added, making a swirling motion with her hands as if she were speaking in a foreign tongue.

  O'Malley shrugged and Emily opened the charred drawer and discreetly took out some clean underthings. She walked over to the closet and began groping mindlessly, conscious that the ghost was positioned over her right shoulder. Annoyed, she turned on him. "I'm sorry. I need more breathing room than this."

  "I do not take up much space," the ghost said with mild irony.

  "You know what I mean. I need privacy. I'm used to living alone."

  "I lived with eleven sisters and brothers in a flat half the size of this."

  "That was then. This is now. We live alone more nowadays." And we like it less, she thought; but it was nothing he needed to know.

  The ghost frowned. "Where do ye want me, then?"

  Emily resisted the obvious retort and snapped, "Out of sight."

  "So be it."

  He vanished.

  "Oh, for --" Hands on hips, she said to thin air, "Do you have to take it so literally?"

  There was no answer. "Have it your way," she murmured, and hauled herself off to the shower to rinse away twenty-four hours of psychic shock-waves. She closed and locked the bathroom door, then let out a short and bitter laugh. As if it really matters.

  But somehow it did matter. The closed door let her get as far as peeling off her jeans and shirt. After that, things skidded to a halt. Emily sat on the edge of the tub in her underwear, feeling reluctant, feeling stupid. Am I in fact insane? The thought hovered in the air around her like thick fog. It was as if she could not see the horizon; she had no idea any more which way was up.

  "If you're in the bathroom, please tell me," she whispered humbly. There was no reply and so Emily decided, very arbitrarily, that she was alone. She took a deep breath, stripped, and stepped quickly into the shower, yanking the curtain closed with something approaching hysteria.

  Another thought occurred to her. "Are you in the tub?" she demanded in a hiss.

  Again there was no answer. She turned on the water, hot, torrential, cleansing. Maybe she could wash his spirit down the drain. She stood under the spray for a long time, waiting to be clean. I feel exploited, she thought. I feel violated. It doesn't matter whether he's right here or not. He might be. I have no way of knowing. Can he read my thoughts? Does he know how much I detest this? I'm a prisoner in my own home. He's like having a television monitor in every room.

  She soaped up her neck; her fingers caught in the chain of the necklace. And all because of this miserable, godforsaken .... She clutched the necklace with soapy hands, trying to unfasten the complicated clasp. No luck. It infuriated her. She threw open the shower curtain, stepped in front of the mirror and wiped away the steam with her hands, straining to see the mechanism reflected there. Impossible. She pulled at the chain with both hands until her neck burned and ached. She swore, she moaned, she whimpered with frustration. But she remained bejeweled.

  "Hey, now!" came the call from the other side of the door. "Do ye plan to be hosin' down all blessed day?"

  "None of your business!" she snapped. She leaned back into the door, tears of frustration welling. Then it hit her that the ghost seemed to be honoring the closed door between them. It was a small gesture. But it was something.

  She emerged dressed and with a towel wrapped around her hair. The ghost was sitting on the small, deeply cushioned loveseat. Emily sat down at her desk, smiled primly, and took out a yellow pad. "Okay, let's get started. Tell me all you know about the woman you ... who ... the victim."

  "She was twenty-six and her name was Hessiah Talbot," the ghost said in a burst. "She was tall and thin, with pale skin and hair -- she had the look of a cornstalk in October, if ye know what I mean. Faded, like, and scraggly."

  "You did know her, then?" Emily asked sharply.

  He looked surprised, and then he looked away. "No."

  She watched the by now familiar flush creep over his cle
ar-cut profile. He was lying. "Look here, O'Malley, you have to tell me the truth, or we can't get anywhere. Did you know Hessiah Talbot?"

  "Our paths crossed once," he said with extreme reluctance.

  Emily waited, and after a pause he went on. "One day ... she finds me a little in my cups, on a side street. She's free to step over me, o' course, like everyone else. But no; she has to call her driver over to haul me off to the mission to get cleaned up and fed. Like a stray dog," he added bitterly.

  "And you resented the kindness?"

  "Kindness, hell. I offended her sense of order," he said. "I was a piece of trash that tumbled into her view."

  She was impressed by his fierce if misplaced pride. She wondered how deeply it ran.

  "Hessiah Talbot was a bitch, plain and simple."

  Emily placed her pen down deliberately. "It sounds very much like you despised her. Why should I believe that you didn't kill her?"

  He returned her cool stare. "Because I haven't killed you."

  She compressed her lips. "Hokay; that's logical," she answered faintly. "Well, let's continue, then."

  Her knees had begun to shake again. It occurred to her that she would never, ever feel safe around him. If she had to believe in his existence at all, she'd have preferred to think of him as a friendly ghost. Naturally that was absurd; he was an entity from another plane, driven by another set of rules from hers.

  Unless, of course, she were hallucinating. The thought that she was simply schizophrenic, projecting demons from her own psyche, was looking more and more attractive to her. After all, nowadays there was hope for the mentally ill; Fergus O'Malley might be nothing a good dose of medication couldn't cure.

  But until she could visit a shrink she decided to sit quietly and take down every word spoken by this ghost who called himself O'Malley. Just in case. As the afternoon wore on, her yellow pad filled up. Dates, names, places, the ghost knew them all. With precise detail he laid out the 1887 mill town of Newarth, Massachusetts, street by street: from the Talbot mansion at the top of the hill to the Irish shanties hard by the river that powered the mill. He trotted out a goodly number of its citizens, from the ambitious, hobnobbing mayor who played cards with the victim's brother at the mansion every Thursday night, to the gypsy peddler who sharpened the Talbots' knives. And he recounted a great many details of the trial itself, including the color of the lining of the cape the mayor's wife, seated in the front row, wore on the day he was sentenced to be hanged.

  All through the day Emily had been sustaining herself from cracker boxes and fueling up at her Mr. Coffee machine, but by eight o'clock she needed something more substantial. "I can't keep going," she pleaded, pushing away the yellow pad. "Let's send out for Chinese."

  The ghost stopped mid-pace. "What? Will they sit and take yer notes for ye?"

  Her smile was weary. "Chinese food, not people. But on second thought, I'm hungrier than that. I'll order a pizza."

  "Peet-sa?"

  "It's a kind of dough-and-tomato thing, with cheese and toppings. You'll like --" She stopped herself. "Well, anyway, give me a minute," she said, heading off for her antique Princess phone.

  The ghost tagged absently along, still deep in thought. But when Emily picked up the phone and began to dial, he snapped out of his revery. The room began to become painfully bright again with his damnable light; it was a reflex reaction with him, like a porcupine erecting its quills. "Stop!" she cried. "I'm only getting food!"

  The light subsided; the ghost mumbled an apology, then watched suspiciously while she ordered a large pepperoni, half mushrooms, half onion, extra cheese. "I have to eat, you know," she told him in injured tones after she hung up. "I have to sleep. I have to bathe. I have a job. I can't stop living so that you can --" She was at a loss. Die? Live?

  "That's true. Ye'll have to leave your employ," he said, rubbing his chin thoughtfully. "It goes without sayin'."

  "What?! Absolutely not. Who knows how long this may take?"

  "Who knows how long I've got?"

  "And I have to see a ... physician, soon," she said suddenly, veering away from the confrontation. "I think I may have something ... wrong with me. I'm going to try to get an appointment tomorrow."

  She was stunned by the transformation in his face. His eyebrows tilted, his lips compressed in sympathy. "'Tisn't serious?"

  "It's ... internal," she hedged, vaguely stroking her right temple. "But I do need to see a doctor." She smiled uneasily, aware that she was very possibly asking herself for permission to find out if she was crazy.

  "Agh, I'm sure ye'r fine; ye look the picture of bloomin' health to me." His voice was filled with gruff conviction.

  "Thanks for the reassurance," she answered stiffly. As if he really cared.

  They worked a little more on what she'd begun to think of as the "chronicle," when the shrill brrrring of the doorbell went off. The ghost jumped, and so did Emily. "Hide!" she said without thinking. She ran to the door and opened it to find a lanky, gawky kid from Domino's, balancing a steaming cardboard box on the palm of his hand.

  "Oh -- my wallet," she said, her thoughts in disarray. "Wait there a sec."

  She turned and found herself face to face with the ghost, who smiled amiably and said, "This is it? This is a peetsa?"

  "My God -- what are you standing here for?" she cried.

  "You told me to wait here," the Domino's boy said, confused.

  "Don't move," she commanded the boy. "Into the bedroom! Now," she practically shouted to the ghost.

  She turned back to the delivery boy, who was pop-eyed with wonder. "My mom told me this would happen," he said in a cracking voice. "Wow."

  "Not you. Him," she answered, jerking her head over her shoulder as she rifled through her purse. She tracked down fifteen dollars and threw it at the delivery boy, who barely had the chance to say, "Who?" before she said, "Beat it," and slammed the door in his face.

  Heart thundering, cheeks on fire, she leaned her forehead into the door and whispered, "My God. He didn't see him."

  She waited a moment, drawing a deep breath or two. The aroma of tomato sauce and onions wafted up from the pizza box she held. Ghost or no ghost, she had to eat. She dropped the box on the tiny oak dining table; then, still standing, she slithered a slice of pizza away from the rest of the pie and with both hands lifted it for that first, satisfying, triangular bite. She polished off the slice, then wandered over to the fridge, took out a Bud Lite, popped the top, and took a long, thirsty pull of beer. This has been one heck of a hell of a day. She heaved a sigh; it came out a burp.

  "Would that be beer?"

  "Yikes!" There he was, perched on her Formica counter and looking wistful. Where he'd come from, she hadn't a clue. "You know, it's very unnerving when you evaporate and reappear like that. And yes, it's beer," she added, annoyed that he'd caught her in a burp.

  "In cans; fancy that." The ghost shook his head, bemused. "Beer. There be few joys in life more profound than a cold stein on a hot day. I do miss it," he said softly.

  He was making her feel guilty, which annoyed her still more. Out of sheer spite -- and forever after, she was sorry she did this -- she walked over to the sink and poured the rest of the can down the drain. "It makes my thinking fuzzy," was the excuse she offered him. "I'll stick to coffee."

  He looked almost hurt; she chose not to see it. Hostages sometimes developed a bizarre sympathy for their abductors; everybody knew that. But Emily would not become a Patty Hearst for him or anyone else.

  "Why are you looking that way?" she demanded. "Am I really supposed to feel bad because you can't have a cold one? What's the big deal about a glass of beer, anyway?"

  She watched the play of emotions on his face--from shock to anger--and thought, He reminds me of a woman, in some ways. He can't hide his feelings at all.

  But when he spoke, he sounded one hundred per cent male. "Are all the women in this pitiable age like ye? Cold, and defensive, and so eager for battle?"

  "I
am not!" she cried, stung. "You don't know anything about me. How can you? You haven't let me get a word in edgewise."

  "I didn't come all this way just for ye to get a word in edgewise!" he answered hotly. "Yer job is to find out who killed Hessiah Talbot --"

  "Nothing to it!"

  "--and then make known the murderer. That's all."

  "And how am I supposed to do that? We don't have town criers any more."

  "It's news, ain't it? Ye'll print it in yer newspaper."

  "Are you crazy? I'd be the laughingstock of Boston!"

  "As near as I can tell, a little laughter'd do you good."

  "Out of the question."

  "You have no choice."

  "Don't I?" Her anger goaded her. "Listen to me, O'Malley. I'm making you up. You don't exist. My mind can create you; my mind can take you away. The pizza boy didn't see you at all!" she said triumphantly.

  He snorted. "And the writing on the drawer?"

  "That doesn't exist either!" she cried, working herself into a frenzy of denial. "I could have done it myself, in my sleep. Yes! I put it there, and now I'll take it away." She rushed to a low kitchen drawer crammed with odds and ends and pulled out a sheet of sandpaper and a screwdriver. Then she ran into the bedroom, pulled out the drawer, and dumped its contents on the bed. She removed the knobs and began furiously to sand away the scorch marks, muttering bits and pieces of incoherence all the while.

  "It's stress, of course ... working too much ... the séance ... suggestible ... or worse ... in the family ... Uncle Jerry ... oh, God, after Vietnam ... lost it ... his demons ... I forgot ... look at me ... what's happening ... out, out ... please ... go ... hold on, hold on ... later ... funny ... tell them ... Lee ... laugh ...."

  Exhausted and in pain, her tears falling in dark wet stains on the freshly sanded wood, Emily ran, at last, out of steam. Her fingertips were on fire. She turned her hand over slowly, dumbly, and stared. Her fingers were scraped and raw. She'd sanded through her skin.

  "What am I doing?" she mumbled, letting her head drop to her chest, no longer fighting the waves of sobs that rolled over her. "What am I doing ... what am I doing ...."